This year’s edition of CoFestival again features a selection of very different artistic approaches, which intervene into our gaze, pushing us into collective reflection of imaginary figures, which constitute and produce society.

By means of pervasion and juxtaposition of these various practices and events we are trying to open up a porous and resilient space that would let us use the festival event as an appeal towards understanding our own existence in a more active way, as improvisers of life. Our own existence we understand as an opposition to the capitalist mobilization of society and as a call for own intervention into the spaces of society where co-living is considered a perspective and a statement. Connecting, questioning, opening and critical (Co)Working is presented as a challenge to all of us.

The events that we are presenting are inscribed each in their own way into the topic of co-living, and by doing so they create a platform for new aesthetics. We use the latter to question the position of marginalized groups in our society, the position of gracious and often silent ballet dancers, we are exploring improvisation as a tool, as a procedure and as staging; we approach archiving as an artistic process in relation to archiving of artistic processes; we are rethinking the format of the festival as an immediate self-critique and potential for a different kind of collaboration; we are exploring the position of the artist as a vulnerable member of society… In all these ways we are further opening the positions that are open and opening up: the positions into which aesthetics is being constituted rather than given. We seek to open this festival as a space of meeting and a possibility for the coexistence of various political stances, rather than only an infantile amazement with “perfect bodies” and dance techniques. All these events, to us, are dance and choreography.

The team of CoFestival, Kino Šiška and Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia with our partners present this year’s CoFestival as a crossover of society and arts and as a possible actual step towards co-living.